DOCSLIB.ORG

Russian Civilization in the 20Th Century

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

General Education Course Information Sheet Please submit this sheet for each proposed course Department & Course Number Russian 90B Course Title Russian Civilization in the Twentieth Century Indicate if Seminar and/or Writing II course 1 Check the recommended GE foundation area(s) and subgroups(s) for this course Foundations of the Arts and Humanities • Literary and Cultural Analysis X • Philosophic and Linguistic Analysis • Visual and Performance Arts Analysis and Practice Foundations of Society and Culture • Historical Analysis • Social Analysis Foundations of Scientific Inquiry • Physical Science With Laboratory or Demonstration Component must be 5 units (or more) • Life Science With Laboratory or Demonstration Component must be 5 units (or more) 2. Briefly describe the rationale for assignment to foundation area(s) and subgroup(s) chosen. This course has been a GE in the above category since 1985 (first as Russian 99B, more recently as Russian 90B). When I started teaching it as a Writing II course, Russian 90BW, it remained a GE course. Unbeknownst to me, however, Russian 90B was dropped from the GE list. I did not discover this until last year, when because of reduced funding, I could not teach it as a Writing II course and offered it as Russian 90B. The content of Russian 90B and Russian 90BW is identical; only the writing assignments differ. All I am requesting is that Russian 90B be reinstated as a GE course. Because I will be teaching it in the spring, I would appreciate your acting on my request as soon as possible. 3. "List faculty member(s) who will serve as instructor (give academic rank): Michael Heim, Professor Do you intend to use graduate student instructors (TAs) in this course? Yes No X If yes, please indicate the number of TAs 4. Indicate when do you anticipate teaching this course over the next three years: 2010-2011 Fall Winter Spring X Enrollment Enrollment Enrollment 25 2011-2012 Fall Winter X Spring Enrollment Enrollment 25 Enrollment 2012-2013 Fall X Winter Spring Enrollment 25 Enrollment Enrollment 5. GE Course Units Is this an existing course that has been modified for inclusion in the new GE? Yes No X Page 1 of 3 6. Please present concise arguments for the GE principles applicable to this course. General Knowledge The course first gives a historical, “factual” introduction to Russia in the twentieth century, then uses works of literature to flesh out the facts. The emphasis is on showing how the historical and literary approaches complement each other. Integrative Learning Authors of the eadings include both Russians and Westerners. The goal is to compare the different assumptions and conclusions each group brings to the subject matter. Ethical Implications Another goal is to compare the ideologies of the US and the USSR, especially the bases for moral decisions in the two societies. Cultural Diversity The USSR was a multicultural society but in a way fundamentally different from the US. The course highlights the differences and their ramifications. Critical Thinking The course challenges the students to go beyond the clichés about both societies they are likely to have brought with them. It stresses the importance of cause and effect in history and creativity in the arts. Rhetorical Effectiveness The two papers mirror the two halves of the course: the first requires them to expound on a political concept, the second to give a close reading of a literary text. Problem-solving Students are told on the first day of class that a major part of the final will consist of an essay on how the US and the USSR deal with ideology. They therefore do all the readings with that issue in mind. Library & Information The first paper requires the students to use at least one web source and one print Literacy source in their research. (A) STUDENT CONTACT PER WEEK (if not applicable write N/A) 1. Lecture: 3 (hours) 2. Discussion Section: N/A (hours) 3. Labs: N/A (hours) 4. Experiential (service learning, internships, other): N/A (hours) 5. Field Trips: N/A (hours) (A) TOTAL Student Contact Per Week 3 (HOURS) (B) OUT-OF-CLASS HOURS PER WEEK (if not applicable write N/A) 1. General Review & Preparation: 1 (hours) 2. Reading 8 (hours) 3. Group Projects: N/A (hours) 4. Preparation for Quizzes & Exams: 1 (hours) 5. Information Literacy Exercises: N/A (hours) 6. Written Assignments: 1 (hours) 7. Research Activity: 1 (hours) (B) TOTAL Out-of-class time per week (HOURS) 12 GRAND TOTAL (A) + (B) must equal at least 15 hours/week 15 (HOURS) Page 2 of 3 Page 3 of 3 Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Michael Heim University of California at Los Angeles Spring 2010 Russian Civilization in the Twentieth Century Russian 90B (Humanities A32, TTh 12:30-1:45) Books Available at the ASUCLA Bookstore Clarence Brown, ed., The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader (Penquin) Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society:A History of the Soviet Union from Within (Harvard) Readings Available on Reserve at Powell Library Poetry packet (Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Joseph Brodsky) Excerpts from Yevgenia Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart (The Harvard Speech) Excerpts from Dmitry Shostakovich, Testimony Excerpts from Julian Huxley, Heredity East and West: Lysenko and World Science Andrei Sakharov, “Open Letter” and Valery Soifer, “Andrei Sakharov and the Fate of Biological Science in USSR” Week Reading 1 Hosking, Chapters 1-5 2 Hosking, Chapters 6-10 3 Hosking, Chapters 11-13 4 Midterm Yury Olesha, Envy in Brown (245-378) 5 Poems in Brown by Anna Akhmatova (113-15), Boris Pasternak (167), Osip Mandelshtam (183-86), excerpts from Nadezhda Mandelshtam's Memoirs (403-12) plus all materials in the poetry packet 6 Excerpts from Yevgenia Ginzburg, Within the Wirlwind Excerpts from Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales in Brown (418-37) 7 Excerpts from Georgy Vladimov, Faithful Ruslan in Brown (539-71) 8 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Matryona’s Home” in Brown (435-80) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart 9 Hosking, Chapter 14 Excerpts from Dmitry Shostakovich, Testimony Excerpts from Julian Huxley, Heredity East and West “Open Letter” and “Andrei Sakharov” 10 Review The course will be graded on the basis of a midterm (15% - date to be announced in class), a final (45%), and two short (three-page) papers (20% each). The first paper will consist of an extended definition of one of the concepts listed on the back of this sheet. You will consult at least two secondary sources, one print (other than Hosking) and one online. The second paper will consist of a close reading of a passage from any of the works of literature we are reading. The first will be due on 27 April, the second on 27 May. The final examination will take place on Tuesday, 8 June from 3 to 6. Students wishing to enroll in an honors section will see me at the end of the first week of lectures. Honors work will include separate class meetings and two short (three-page) papers. All students are welcome to come to office hours (Tuesdays and Thursdays 1l:30-12:20) in Humanities 316. See me after class or e-mail me ([email protected]) to make an appointment for another time. A note on names. You should be familiar with the names of the main leaders (Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin) and of all the writers in the syllabus. While reading The First Socialist Society, concentrate on the concepts on the back of this sheet. They will be discussed during the first weeks of class. I suggest you make an index card for each and add to it whenever the term reappears. Bolshevik Menshevik 1905 Revolution soviet Duma Provisional Government February Revolution October Revolution Civil War (Reds vs. Whites) war communism Cheka/GPU/NKVD/KGB/FSB USSR nomenklatura NEP kulak kolkhoz collectivization socialism in one country five-year plan communal apartment Stakhanovite Socialist Realism purges show trials gulag Nazi-Soviet Pact Great Fatherland War siege of Leningrad Stalingrad Yalta Conference cold war iron curtain cosmopolitans (Doctor’s Plot) Twentieth Congress personality cult de-Stalinization rehabilitation thaw Hungarian Uprising 1956 sputnik Prague Spring 1968 dissident movement samizdat/tamizdat détente third wave of emigration glasnost perestroika Russian Federation Chechnia privatization shock therapy oligarch UCLA Course Inventory Management System - Course Revision Proposal Course Revision Proposal Russian 90B Russian Civilization in the 20th Century Requested revisions that apply: Renumbering Title Format Requisites Units Grading Description Multiple Listing: Add New Change Number Delete Concurrent Listing: Add New Change Number Delete CURRENT PROPOSED Course Number Russian 90B Russian 90B Title Russian Civilization in the 20th Century Russian Civilization in the 20th Century Short Title RUSSIAN CVLZTN-20 C RUSSIAN CVLZTN-20 C Units Fixed: 4 Fixed: 5 Grading Letter grade or Passed/Not Passed Letter grade or Basis Passed/Not Passed Instructional Primary Format Primary Format Format Lecture Lecture - 3 hours per week Secondary Format Secondary Format None None - 0 hours per week TIE Code LECS - Lecture (Plus Supplementary Activity) [T] LECS - Lecture (Plus Supplementary Activity) [T] GE No Yes Requisites None None http://web.registrar.ucla.edu/cims/courses/cours...45550&nextpage=courseformreviseview.asp&tdb=CIMS (1 of 3) [1/24/2011 4:25:49 PM] UCLA Course Inventory Management System - Course Revision Proposal Description Lecture, three hours. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 90BW. Lecture, three Survey of literature, theater, cinema, television, press, music, and arts. Emphasis on contemporary period, with constant reference to Russian and early Soviet antecedents. hours. Not open P/NP or letter grading. for credit to students with credit for course 90BW.
Recommended publications
  • I Was First Assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow in 1961

    I Was First Assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow in 1961

    Remembering Vasya Aksyonov With Bella Akhmadulina and Vasily Aksyonov Photo by Rebecca Matlock I was first assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow in 1961. This was when the “Generation of the Sixties” (шестидесятники) was beginning to rise in prominence. It was an exciting development for those of us who admired Russian literature and were appalled at the crushing of creativity brought on by Stalin’s enforced “socialist realism.” I read Vasya’s Starry Ticket with great interest, particularly since it seemed to deal with the same theme as the American writer J.D. Salinger did in his The Catcher in the Rye—a disaffected adolescent who runs away from humdrum reality to what he imagines will be a more glamorous life elsewhere. I then began to follow the stories Vasya published in Yunost’. “Oranges from Morocco” was one that impressed me. Much later, he told me that the story was inspired by an experience while he was in school in Magadan. The original title had been “Oranges from Israel.” He was instructed to replace Israel with Morocco in the title after the Soviet Union broke relations with Israel following the 1967 war. Although I was a young diplomat not much older than Vasya, my academic specialty had been Russian literature and I was eager to meet as many Soviet writers as possible. In fact, one of the reasons I entered the American Foreign Service was because it seemed, while Stalin was still alive, one of the few ways an American could live for a time in the Soviet Union and thus have direct contact with Russian culture.
  • Of Russian Literaturepart I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition

    Of Russian Literaturepart I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition

    The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of Russian LiteraturePART I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition Chapter 1 The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of 27. Russian Literature1 Any national literature is to some significant extent a mirror held up to its people’s collective countenance: its myths, aspirations, national triumphs and traumas, current ideologies, historical understanding, lin guistic tra- ditions. But it is also more than that — more than a reflection in the glass of what has come before and what is now, even as one glances into it, passing from view. It is, in a real sense, generative of new meaning, and thus capable of shaping that countenance in the future. For the society that takes its literary products seriously, the text of a novel or poem can be a kind of genetic code2 for predicting, not concrete outcomes or actual progeny, but something no less pregnant with future action: the forms of a culture’s historical imagination. The variations seem limitless, and yet how is it we are able to determine any given work of literature is clearly identifiable as Russian? Why could Flaubert’s Emma Bovary in some sense not be imagin- ed by the great realist who created Anna Karenina? How is Dostoevsky’s 1 Originally appeared 2 See Chapter 4 in Part 1 as part 1 of the essay/chapter of the present volume with its “Russian Literature,” in Cambridge discussion of how genes and Companion to Modern Russian “memes” work together to create Culture, ed. Nicholas Rzhevsky an individual’s and a culture’s (Cambridge: Cambridge University views of itself.
  • The Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin

    The Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Scholarship@Western Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-21-2012 12:00 AM Burying Dystopia: the Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin Natalya Domina The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Professor Calin-Andrei Mihailescu The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Natalya Domina 2012 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Domina, Natalya, "Burying Dystopia: the Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin" (2012). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 834. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/834 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BURYING DYSTOPIA: THE CASES OF VENEDIKT EROFEEV, KURT VONNEGUT, AND VICTOR PELEVIN (Spine Title: BURYING DYSTOPIA) (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Natalya Domina Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada Natalya Domina 2012 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners ____________________________ ________________________________ Prof.
  • Reading and Writing Against Destruction

    Reading and Writing Against Destruction

    Transcultural Studies, 4 (2008), 107-117. EKATERINA NEKLYUDOVA READING AND WRITING AGAINST DESTRUCTION This article deals with the tactics of survival that the inmates of Gulag (the penitentiary system of prisons and labor camps in the Soviet Union)1 practiced while imprisoned. In particular, I focus on the theme of reading and writing in the conditions of the Soviet prisons and labor camps, where writing was mostly prohibited, and reading was limited and highly regulated and censored. However, the inmates of Soviet prisons managed to create, read, write and even publish their notes while incarcerated. I show how three survivors of the Soviet camps – Varlam Shalamov, Evgenia Ginzburg, and Eduard Kuznetsov used the acts of reading and writing to preserve their identities from complete corruption and disintegration. I argue that word as a grammatical unit of text initiates the process of the recovery and deliverance of prisoners’ morale. Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982), a writer and a journalist, was born in Rus- sian city of Vologda. He spent seventeen years in total in prisons and labor camps of Kolyma (1929-1931, 1937-1943, 1943-1951). When Shalamov was released and returned from the camps to the Western part of Russia (Kalinin- grad), he started recording his camp experience in the form of the semi- fictional, semi-documentary Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Tales].2 Even though his camp prose was never published in the Soviet Union in his lifetime, it received worldwide publicity: Kolyma Tales was distributed by the under- ground movement of Samizdat and published abroad. The impact of these short stories was immense: they were considered as the most authentic and merciless descriptions of prisoners’ sufferings in the Soviet camps of the Sta- linist regime.
  • Fourteenth Annual University of California Undergraduate Research Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies

    Fourteenth Annual University of California Undergraduate Research Conference on Slavic and East/Central European Studies

    FOURTEENTH ANNUAL UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH CONFERENCE ON SLAVIC AND EAST/CENTRAL EUROPEAN STUDIES APRIL 30, 2011 UCLA Jonathan Blaisdell [email protected] Majors: Russian Studies, Political Sciences, Central and East European Languages and Cultures Minor: North African and Middle Eastern Studies, UCLA “The Threat of Russian Disintegration” One major concern for Russia during the early 1990’s was a looming fear of massive territorial fragmentation and erosion of power. Moscow was presenting itself as being incapable of governing effectively and many regions within the Russian Federation felt disinclined to hand over their tax revenues to the central budget. Many regional leaders proclaimed a reluctance to invest in what seemed to be shaping into another failed Russian central authority. President Yeltsin found himself dealing with a very real and fragile situation, which could have easily ended in the complete disintegration of the Russian Federation. In modern Russia, Putin has moved towards a more centralized, authoritarian regime. However, the establishment of a “power vertical” has not been a cure-all remedy against the possible disintegration of the modern Russian state. Through a deeper analysis of Yeltsin’s and Putin’s regimes, this paper will challenge modern concerns of disaggregation of the existing Russian political system. Nadya Dorsht [email protected] Major: Russian Studies, UCLA “The Russian Energy State: An Economic and Legal Assessment” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was no longer the bastion of a superpower the world once feared. Plagued by economic troubles, ethnic movements, and mass immigration, Russia was to experience a myriad of phenomena, some novel and others perpetuated from the former regime, that would dictate Russia’s political and business landscape !1 for the next two decades.
  • Rfe/Ri. Inc. Broadcast Archive Daily

    Rfe/Ri. Inc. Broadcast Archive Daily

    RFE/RI. INC. DAILY BROADCAT RL- QuAci-ct,v) BROADCAST ARCHIVE ANALYSES 9g6 ickA4 a JAN vAK/ RADIO FREE EUROPE RADIO UBERTY RADIO LIBERTY DAILY BROADCAST ANALYSIS RUSSIAN SERVICE (For a summary of the news coverage used by the Russian Service please see the end of the DBA.) (An * next to a program indicates designated for translation.) Russian Daily Broadcast Analysis Wednesday, 1 January 1986 D. Felton A. USSR TOPICS -- POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL: 1. Soviet-US Relations. STARTING THE DAY (Voznesenskaya, M 5) recalled the case of American schoolgirl Samantha Smith, who was invited to the USSR after having written a letter to the Kremlin asking why the Soviet leaders were threatening the world with war and who was killed last August in an air crash. The program spoke of a propaganda maneuver by the USSR, and said that while she might have been a source of irritation upon returning home, like other pacifists in the West she was not subjected to any persecution, in contrast to pacifists in such countries as the USSR and the GDR. Commenting on an article in Pionengmya Pravda suggesting that the air crash could have been the work of "enemies" who saw Samantha Smith as an "agent of Moscow," the program said the international declaration of children's rights describes instilling in children a hatred of other peoples as a crime and cited the Bible that those whom miskod children should have a millstone tied around their neck and be thrown into the sea. 2. Dissidents and Human Rights. In HUMAN RIGHTS (Alexeyeva, NY 20), a RERUN from December 26, veteran human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva commented on the deteriorating human rights situation in the USSR in 1985.
  • The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia

    The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia

    Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Dissertations Graduate Research 2008 The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia Yuri N. Drumi Andrews University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations Part of the European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Political History Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Drumi, Yuri N., "The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia" (2008). Dissertations. 40. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/40 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Research at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your interest in the Andrews University Digital Library of Dissertations and Theses. Please honor the copyright of this document by not duplicating or distributing additional copies in any form without the author’s express written permission. Thanks for your cooperation. ABSTRACT THE TRAUMA OF STALINISM NARRATED IN VARLAM T. SHALAMOV'S KOLYMSKIE RASSKAZY: MISSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA by Yuri N. Drumi Adviser: Rudi Maier ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH Dissertation Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Title: THE TRAUMA OF STALINISM NARRATED IN VARLAM T. SHALAMOV'S KOLYMSKIE RASSKAZY: MISSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA Name of researcher: Yuri N. Drumi Name and degree of faculty adviser: Rudi Maier, Ph.D. Date completed: April 2008 Stalinism and the punitive system of the Gulag left an indelible stamp on the entire social matrix of Russia.
  • Dostoevskyand Shalamov: Orpheus and Pluto

    Dostoevskyand Shalamov: Orpheus and Pluto

    The Dostoevsky Journal:An Independent Review, 1 (2000), 147-57. ELENA MIKHAILIK DOSTOEVSKYAND SHALAMOV: ORPHEUS AND PLUTO "When I've fallen to the very bottom I heard a tap from below." Stanislav E. Lez In Varlam Shalamov's story "The Funeral Oration" two political prisoners heaving stone in a Kolyma goldmine compare their lot to that of the Decembrists sent to the Siberian mines more than a century ago. I told Fediakhin about the quotas the Decembrists were assigned at Ner­ chinsk according to the "Memories of Maria Volkonskaia," - three poods 1 of , ore per worker. - And pow much would our quota weigh, Vasilii Petrovich? - Fediakhin ~~ . I did a calculation - it was about eight hundred poods. - Well, Vasilii Petrovich, look how the quotas have gone up....2 If one was to choose a single quotation that defines Shalamov's manifold rela-: . tionship with Dostoevsky it will probably be this one, the passage where Dosto­ evsky's name is not even mentioned. And yet it neatly captures the nature of the distance between the House ofthe Dead, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and the -Kolyma Tales. The production quotas have been increased 266.666666666(6) times. This radical change in the limits of human experience sets the framework within which Shalamov sees Dostoevsky's philosophical ideas and creative de- vices. : Here I would like to say·that in my opinion the whole scope of Shalamov's Dostoevsky connections cannot be covered within the boundaries of a single arti-. cle or even a series of articles. Therefore the aim of this article is to define several interesting aspects of the problem and tentatively suggest the ways, along which those aspects might be explored.
  • ABSTRACT BITCHES and THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, and PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS in the BITCHES' WAR by Adam Richard

    ABSTRACT BITCHES and THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, and PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS in the BITCHES' WAR by Adam Richard

    ABSTRACT BITCHES AND THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR by Adam Richard Rodger Amongst the professional criminals imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag, a split developed between those who kept to the Thieves’ Law and those who broke the Law and collaborated with the State. This violent schism, the Bitches’ War, raged across the entire Gulag system, becoming most heated between 1948 and 1953, and implicated the camps’ guards and administrators as much as the prisoners themselves. This research examines primary and secondary sources, heavily incorporating Gulag survivor memoirs, to investigate the culture of the Thieves-in-Law, these professional criminals, and also to uncover the involvement, intentions, and guilt of the camp administration. This study argues that the Bitches’ War sheds light on the real purpose and function of the Gulag; that it was not primarily about ideological re-education, nor was it primarily about economics and production, but that the Gulag served as a model for social control through use of power, persuasion, and violence. BITCHES AND THIEVES: GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of Master’s Degree by Adam Richard Rodger Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2017 Advisor: Dr. Stephen Norris Reader: Dr. Dan Prior Reader: Dr. Scott Kenworthy ©2017 Adam Richard Rodger This thesis titled BITCHES AND THIEVES GULAG GUARDS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN THE BITCHES’ WAR by Adam Richard Rodger has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Sciences and The Department of History ____________________________________________________ Dr.
  • Iuliia Kysla

    Iuliia Kysla

    Rethinking the Postwar Era: Soviet Ukrainian Writers Under Late Stalinism, 1945-1949 by Iuliia Kysla A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History and Classics University of Alberta © Iuliia Kysla, 2018 Abstract This dissertation advances the study of late Stalinism, which has until recently been regarded as a bizarre appendage to Stalin’s rule, and aims to answer the question of whether late Stalinism was a rupture with or continuation of its prewar precursor. I analyze the reintegration of Ukrainian writers into the postwar Soviet polity and their adaptation to the new realities following the dramatic upheavals of war. Focusing on two parallel case studies, Lviv and Kyiv, this study explores how the Soviet regime worked with members of the intelligentsia in these two cities after 1945, at a time when both sides were engaged in “identification games.” This dissertation demonstrates that, despite the regime’s obsession with control, there was some room for independent action on the part of Ukrainian writers and other intellectuals. Authors exploited gaps in Soviet discourse to reclaim agency, which they used as a vehicle to promote their own cultural agendas. Unlike the 1930s, when all official writers had to internalize the tropes of Soviet culture, in the postwar years there was some flexibility in an author’s ability to accept or reject the Soviet system. Moreover, this dissertation suggests that Stalin’s postwar cultural policy—unlike the strategies of the 1930s, which relied predominantly on coercive tactics—was defined mainly by discipline by humiliation, which often involved bullying and threatening members of the creative intelligentsia.
  • Talking Fish: on Soviet Dissident Memoirs*

    Talking Fish: on Soviet Dissident Memoirs*

    Talking Fish: On Soviet Dissident Memoirs* Benjamin Nathans University of Pennsylvania My article may appear to be idle chatter, but for Western sovietolo- gists at any rate it has the same interest that a fish would have for an ichthyologist if it were suddenly to begin to talk. ðAndrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? ½samizdat, 1969Þ All Soviet émigrés write ½or: make up something. Am I any worse than they are? ðAleksandr Zinoviev, Homo Sovieticus ½Lausanne, 1981Þ IfIamasked,“Did this happen?” I will reply, “No.” If I am asked, “Is this true?” Iwillsay,“Of course.” ðElena Bonner, Mothers and Daughters ½New York, 1991Þ I On July 6, 1968, at a party in Moscow celebrating the twenty-eighth birthday of Pavel Litvinov, two guests who had never met before lingered late into the night. Litvinov, a physics teacher and the grandson of Stalin’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, had recently made a name for himself as the coauthor of a samizdat text, “An Appeal to World Opinion,” thathadgarneredwideattention inside and outside the Soviet Union. He had been summoned several times by the Committee for State Security ðKGBÞ for what it called “prophylactic talks.” Many of those present at the party were, like Litvinov, connected in one way or another to the dissident movement, a loose conglomeration of Soviet citizens who had initially coalesced around the 1966 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, seeking to defend civil rights inscribed in the Soviet constitution and * For comments on previous drafts of this article, I would like to thank the anonymous readers for the Journal of Modern History as well as Alexander Gribanov, Jochen Hell- beck, Edward Kline, Ann Komaromi, Eli Nathans, Sydney Nathans, Serguei Oushakine, Kevin M.
  • Shalamov's Testament: Pushkinian Precepts in Kolyma Tales

    Shalamov's Testament: Pushkinian Precepts in Kolyma Tales

    Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2020 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2020 Shalamov's Testament: Pushkinian Precepts in Kolyma Tales Andres I. Meraz Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020 Part of the Russian Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Meraz, Andres I., "Shalamov's Testament: Pushkinian Precepts in Kolyma Tales" (2020). Senior Projects Spring 2020. 310. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/310 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Shalamov’s Testament: Pushkinian Precepts in Kolyma Tales Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College by Andres I. Meraz Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2020 Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction The Gulag Chronicler and the National Poet 1 Chapter 1 Pushkin’s Heir 13 Chapter 2 Pushkinian Authorial Strategies in Kolyma Tales 32 Chapter 3 A Chronicler of His Time 50 Conclusion The Testament of Pushkin in Contemporary Russian Fiction 68 Bibliography 72 i Acknowledgments This project would not have been possible without the Russian and Eurasian Studies program at Bard College.